It’s incredibly difficult to actually criticize Portal 2. At its heart it’s a very simple game, its premise a basic exercise in navigating from A-B, yet everything it attempts, it does so perfectly. Its puzzles are always ingenious, and their difficulty always excellently balanced. What starts out as relatively basic, though still brain-bafflingly solid tests built around portal placement and spatial awareness, gradually evolves into multifaceted, momentum-based, time-sensitive tasks, something utterly intimidating in concept, yet surprisingly feasible when you reach that point in the game. Considering all the different layers often involved, some of the puzzle design here is unbelievably good, and quite how Valve conceived some of the more challenging levels on show here is completely beyond us. If you thought some of Portal 1’s tests were complex, you really ain’t seen nothing yet.

Yet despite the puzzles growing increasingly intricate throughout – particularly in the game’s co-op mode where two portal guns allow for some especially incomprehensible scenarios (and later on, when gels that modify your speed and jump height become introduced) they always avoid becoming overly frustrating; that breakthrough eureka moment somehow always hitting at just the right time.

It’s all thanks to Valve’s pitch-perfect pacing, natural difficulty progression, and the method in which the developer introduces new mechanics. Rather than throwing you in at the deep end, Valve does a brilliantly subtle job at teaching the player by doing, eventually to the point where using gels, manipulating lasers or directing tractor beams feels instinctive – as ridiculous as that may sound. Subtle tweaks, too, like switching Portal 1’s energy balls for lasers, makes the game feel more instantaneous, so that when you do finally figure out the answer to the puzzle, there’s no waiting around for the elements to fall into place.

Besides the puzzles themselves, it’s Portal 2’s frankly brilliant dialogue that will leave players hooked. Portal 2 is the funniest game of the year, with an award-worthy script that manages to put every other game to shame.

It’s arguable that TV funny man Stephen Merchant – who voices the game’s lovable bot Wheatley – is actually too good, regularly leaving us in fits of laughter with his hilarious quips and brilliant one-liners. Just like GLaDOS in the original, he’s what makes the game, astonishingly threatening to outshine J.K. Simmons’ show-stopping work as Aperture Science founder Cave Johnson, and even the cold-hearted, acutely funny robo-bitch herself, a character whose input in Portal 2 we want to avoid discussing completely for fear of revealing any spoilers.

The single-player campaign is stronger than the co-op though, with the total lack of story in the co-op game making it feel more like something tacked on later in development than a well-considered addition. It’s still utterly brilliant, mind, and though it’s restricted to a series of Portal 1-esque challenge rooms, some fantastic design decisions (like the ping tool, for example, which helps partners communicate where to place puzzles is genius), make it one of the better co-op experiences we’ve had to date.

After Valve’s ‘tainted’ history with Sony’s console, we had been expecting to see the PS3 version of Portal 2 suffer in comparison to its counterparts. But thankfully it doesn’t, running at a smooth 30fps and without barely a hiccup. The load times are perhaps too frequent and occasionally a little too lengthy (the 10-15 second load after some of the smaller test chambers can begin to grate), but other than that, there’s really nothing you can point the finger at. And with some excellent Steam features, the PS3 version is easily the better option when it comes to choosing between the console version on offer.

Portal 2 is one of those sequels that outdoes the original by such a margin that it makes its predecessor seem almost irrelevant. The tweaks, dialogue and structure put it on a level with Valve’s, heck, the medium’s very best, easily being the best game we’ve played so far this year, and deserving of being remembered alongside the Half-Lifes, GTAs and Icos of the world. This was a triumph.

But apparently not. Visceral has outdone themselves again in Dead Space 2, introducing not one, but two horrific new child mutants that’ll make your skin crawl: a crawling undead fetus with an explosive sack on its back, and a pack of disfigured adolescents who prefer chewing off your face than doing the things ‘normal’ teenagers do.

Dead Space 2 is sick, in every sense of the word…

It all takes place three years after the original aboard The Sprawl, a mammoth space station built on one of Saturn’s moons, with lead character Isaac Clarke put under lock and key in the station’s asylum after having developed dementia. Admittedly there isn’t all that much to the story – the Markers are back, and so are the Unitologists, some people aren’t quite who they say they are, and Isaac’s girlfriend Nicole is still rattling around in his head. So far then, so Dead Space.

But despite sharing it’s obvious similarities, Dead Space 2 is an altogether different game to the original. Gone are the tight, claustrophobic corridors of the Ishimura (at least for the most part, as to say any more would spoil one of Dead Space 2’s greatest moments), replaced by The Sprawl’s relatively open – and populated – areas, and rather than creeping through engine rooms and ship decks, you’ll be blasting your way through horror-staple hospitals and children’s nurseries. And that itself – ignoring the new-found focus on action for a moment – is a key difference when it comes to setting up the mood for the sequel, with the relative familiarity of the locations helping Visceral play with your emotions more than they ever could with the relatively samey Ishimura.

In fact, it’s the environments themselves that are more likely to creep you out than the Necromophs this time around, trading the loneliness, mystery and dread of the first game for a sense of anger, desperation and turmoil of your own colony coming under attack.

Most of the scares though, come from Nicole, who’s now haunting Isaac for her death on the Ishimura. Whether it’s her suddenly creeping up on Isaac and screaming down his throat or doing something freakishly unnerving, Visceral manage to use the character to build brilliantly on the original’s fantastic mix of shock scares, player paranoia and ‘WTF moments’ and deliver one of the eeriest games we’ve played in years.

The game’s now incredibly slick, too. Controls have been remapped to allow for a more conventional setup (you can reload, for example, by simply tapping Square, rather than the convoluted L1 + X combo of the original), while movement feels far less clunky than that of Dead Space 1. But then it needed to be, with the sequel sharing much more in common with a third-person shooter than the survival horror feel of the original. In many respects, it’s almost like the difference between Resi 4 and Resi 5.

That faster, action-packed focus allows Visceral to throw scene after scene of breathtaking Hollywood-style set-pieces at the player, be it a battle on a speeding train, a gunfight out in space (the new ‘Iron Man’ Zero-G areas are a real highlight), or the insane – though disappointingly poorly designed – final boss. There’s less of a focus on puzzles and tension-building, too, (although the new Velociraptor-like Stalker Necromorphs do a great job at ramping up our heart rate every time) and more emphasis on pouring a tonne of bad guys into the same room as you – a relief for some perhaps, but a nightmare for others. Indeed, it’s quite telling that our favourite moment came via Chapter 10, a moment of brilliance that we wish Visceral could have dragged out for longer than it did. Confused? Well, you’ll see what we mean when you get there…

The inclusion of a multiplayer component further highlights Dead Space 2’s mainstream-action focus, too. Fun but ultimately throwaway, the multiplayer mode borrows from games like Left 4 Dead and Singularity to pitch man against mutant, although we really can’t see it holding you back from the more established online stalwarts that are out there.

Though it starts to waver in the second half (the confusion between straight-out shooter and well-paced horror starts to show later on), Dead Space 2’s epic action sequences and unrelenting spooks had us trembling on more than one occasion. Strap on those headphones, turn off the lights, and prepare yourself for one of the most terrifying shooters you’ll play this year. A different, but equally essential sequel.

With Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, such an identity crisis has been discarded, giving life to a sweeping and distinct openworlder that’s as much about constant story progression as it is about city-wide renovation. Assassin’s Creed has finally accepted that it’s pretty ‘out there’ in its design choices, and is revelling in it. A good thing, too.

The main thread of the plot picks up just where Assassin’s Creed 2 finished, with Ezio confronting the Pope and seeing an apparition of the goddess Minerva appear in front of him. From there, it’s a jaunt to Rome to take down the Borgia family, with the occasional jump forward in time to visit Desmond and company.

It’s a much simpler tale than previous Assassin’s Creeds, and better for it. Ezio has become an older, wiser and more stoic character, and the supporting cast (a mix of old and new) are stronger than before. Basically, it’s a lot less pretentious. There’s a lot less legwork if you just want to hammer through the plot, and the variety in assassination types and mission objectives is welcome.

You may be scaling a huge building to sneak up on a filthy lawyer, tracking an informant through the ruins of ancient Rome or sneaking up on someone during a play in the Colosseum. Apart from a few glitchy objectives here and there, it’s all strong stuff.

There’s plenty to do outside of the missions too, and to really enjoy Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, you’re best examining all the glowing blips on your minimap before you progress the story. There’s tons to do.

You can excavate tombs for treasure in classic Prince of Persia platforming style, carry out side-missions for the various factions around town, take down Borgia-controlled areas of the city, and even renovate buildings. There’s a serious amount of content here, even before you dive into the brand-new multiplayer modes.

Yes, for the first time, Assassin’s Creed has a true online component, and it’s surprisingly engaging. Those expecting the kind of pace that Halo and Call of Duty offer might be put off, but if you’re prepared to put in the time to slowly pace the city, tracking down a target and staying clear of your opponents, all of whom are trying to do the same thing. Acting suspiciously will raise your profile and your opponents will realise you’re an assassin. It’s all about patience – not something that you’d normally associate with online gaming.

At the moment, the community seems enamoured with this slower pace. After all, any attempt at griefing or idiocy will just see you sliced down in cold blood, so it pays to play the game properly. It’ll be interesting to see how the game evolves over time. So far so good, though, there are no obvious exploits of bugs weighing it all down.

When it comes down to it, though, Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood captures the things that has made the previous two games so successful and improved upon them. By the time you reach the second half of the story, you’ll have your own team of assassins which can be called upon at any time for a slick murder job, making you feel more like a leader than most games ever manage. You can even send them off on contracts around Europe to level them up in a pseudo strategy game. It’s odd, but compelling. Building your own little assassin army is empowering.

It’s the free-running freedom that really comes to the fore. With fewer dull mission objectives and fetch quests than the previous games, you’re free to enjoy the playground that is Italy’s grand capital to its full extent. And what a place to run around – huge towers to climb, stunning architecture to explore and a glorious view at every turn. Once you’ve mastered the subtleties of the climbing mechanics – and you should have by now – Rome is your toy to do with what you will.

Having said all that though, this feels like the last time Assassin’s Creed can rely on this type of gameplay alone to sustain it, and the inevitable ‘proper’ sequel will need to add some genuine variety. For a year’s work, Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood is impressive stuff. This is no lazy cash-in, it’s the hard work of talented people honing their craft, and another sure-fire hit. Forza Ezio Auditore.

The setting has moved from the greyer than grey Manhattan setting to a more temperate southern locale of New Marais (hence Cole losing the jacket), allowing Sucker Punch to experiment more with the environment. We witnessed graveyards, swamps and more traditional urban motifs which have been updated and increased destructibility, with players now able to destroy choice elements of the scenery, such as sniper towers, allowing further combative potential.

Cole’s power set has also drastically evolved, now packing new ice-centric abilities and a giant melee-based electrical prong – dubbed the Amp. This impressive apparatus is mainly for hitting enemies around the head with, but when enhanced with Cole’s electrical channelling, it can be used to take down entire groups of enemies via powered-up combos and finishers, of which six have so far been revealed. The original inFamous excelled in long-range combat and it’s very encouraging to see the sequel offer more up-close possibilities, which feel both impactful and empowering.

The new version of Cole proved controversial when he was first unveiled at this year’s E3, and thankfully the developers have scaled back his reinvention with the protagonist still recognisable from before. He has new abilities and a slightly more angsty voice, but he’s still just as loveably flawed and moody. He’s as far away from the Nathan Drake archetype as possible, which should lead to a noticeably unique story experience.

Speaking of which, inFamous 2 involves an all-new mysterious threat known as the Corrupted. Our short game demo featured taking down a selection of the grotesque mutated enemies which had cartilage and bone protruding from all of their disgusting extremities. Sucker Punch were tight-lipped regarding their origin but we suspect that they will be the main enemy presence, alongside the shady government soldiers who consistently fail in trying reign in our unlikely hero.

Currently development is only focusing on the single-player side of things, and our hosts wouldn’t be pressed on whether 3D, Move or any kind of multiplayer functionality would feature. However, with the game set for release sometime during 2011, there’s still plenty of time for megaton back-of-the-box features to be unveiled.

Even though our play session with inFamous 2 was extremely brief – only featuring around 30 minutes of gameplay in total – it’s very clear from what we saw that Sucker Punch aren’t leaving any stone unturned when it comes to improving this already brilliant franchise. All of these new additions feel like the kind of evolution every sequel should go through, though many rarely do, and for reason every gamer should have this title on their radar. We can’t wait to find out what else the developers have up their sleeves over the coming months. Be excited, very excited.

First things first. Any concerns about Treyarch’s ability to hit the true Triple-A heights should be hurled out of the window. This is the team’s best CoD, and by some distance. So we can all breathe again and get stuck into what makes Call of Duty: Black Ops such a voluminous package, such a fantastic multiplayer experience and the most interesting single-player campaign in the series’ history.

Yes, you get a lot of bang for your buck with Black Ops. The menu screen presents Campaign, Multi and Zombies as your main options, and there are sub-menus within all of them. Chances are you’ll dive straight into Campaign though, with knuckles pre-whitened in anticipation of another Call of Duty rollercoaster.

Treyarch has struggled in the past in maintaining the illusion that Infinity Ward’s CoD games have managed so well. Essentially, these are corridor shooters with very little enemy AI, and the drama comes from both the tension of survival and the spectacle of the game’s set-pieces.

Black Ops doesn’t begin well. Its opening hours are a relentless shooting gallery of dimwitted enemies popping their heads out, allies yelling rubbish and you ploughing forward to the yellow floating number that means you can continue. Gaps in AI see troops on opposite sides of the conflict literally running past each other. To be honest, it’s a worrying start.

As the whole game plays out in a series of flashbacks, it means Treyarch has the ability to jump around in time and location fairly easily. When protagonist Alex Mason talks about his time in Vietnam, things really do start to pick up, and Black Ops gets really quite interesting. During its quieter moments, Black Ops actually gets you invested in its characters and story in a way that no other Call of Duty game has managed.

There’s an intriguing plot involving a major political leader, some shady agency that has you trapped to a seat during interrogation, and a whistlestop tour of some of the Cold War’s most contentious and infamous hot spots. There are issues, too, narratively. The pay off doesn’t quite match the set-up, and there are huge constructs borrowed liberally from other places, but it does keep you engaged and interested in where it’s heading, which is a lot more than Modern Warfare 2 managed to do.

Where Call of Duty: Black Ops really shines though, is in multiplayer. It really is something special. Instead of deviating, Treyarch has simply expanded upon the magnificent foundation laid down by Infinity Ward, but done so in a way that adds layers of depth and ways to play.

Structurally, the unlock and perks systems that have underpinned CoD online for the past few years have been tweaked. You’ll now earn CoD points alongside XP, which you can use to buy new weapons, attachments and perks. However, a lot of the stuff you can buy will still be locked until you structurally, the unlock and perks systems that have underpinned CoD online for the past few years have been tweaked. You’ll now earn CoD points alongside XP, which you can use to buy new weapons, attachments and perks. However, a lot of the stuff you can buy will still be locked until you win more back. Come in the bottom three, and you obviously won’t.

More interesting than that though, are the matches themselves. Its split into four games – One In The Chamber, Sticks And Stones, Sharpshooter and Gun Game – and each of them has a little magic spark that’ll have you coming back for more.

One In The Chamber, for example, is ridiculously tense. You’ve got a pistol and one bullet. It’s an insta-kill if you hit someone with it, but miss and it’s just you and your knife. Patience, accuracy and a steel nerve are the order of the day here. Stick And Stones is even better. It’s exploding crossbow bolts, projectile knives and a tomahawk. It’s fairly normal stuff, until you get hit with a tomahawk and you’re ‘bankrupted’, causing you to lose all your points. Every one of Wager mode’s game types has a sneaky way to grief your enemies, and it makes them all uniformly hilarious.

Stepping out into the regular multiplayer modes is tremendous too. They’re familiar, sure, but Treyarch has great map-making skill, and the killstreaks have been tweaked to avoid some of Modern Warfare 2’s more egregious crimes. Of course, this might all change when the game gets out into the wild and every 13-year-old boy in America finds out you can win by spinning in a circle with a flamethrower or something, but for now, it’s a truly spectacular online experience.

Rounding up the package is Zombies, a fun way to kill 10 minutes of time but not really worth distracting yourself from multiplayer for. Although make sure you try out the mode where you play as Castro, McNamara, Nixon and JFK. Hilarity ensues.

So, it’s a healthy and hearty package of violence and virtual warfare, as Call of Duty now regularly is. It’s a worthy successor to the name, unquestionably, and it’s also the type of game that really justifies the amount of money being spent on it – this feels like an event, like the big alpha gorilla that walks into the pen, grabs the good bananas, sidles up next his women and scares off all the pretenders with a flare of his nostrils and a grunt. You really don’t want to mess with this guy.

Treyarch has definitely stepped up its game. The balls in your court, now, Infinity Ward. What can you do with it?

To say Homefront’s multiplayer is nothing like the big boys though would be a bit of a fib. It feels very much like Call of Duty in a Battlefield setup. Controls are nigh-on identical to Modern Warfare’s, pushing the left stick to sprint, Circle to crouch, shoulder button to fire, and the D-pad to use special items. It’s just as responsive too, although the size of the maps (maps can be vast and sweeping, easily on a par with some of BF:BC2’s biggest online battlegrounds) mean it isn’t quite as frantic as Call of Duty’s constant kill/respawn cycle.

The 16-a-side battles mean that there’s always something going on wherever you look though, be it grenades going off at your feet, tanks rumbling in the distance, or a helicopter gunship wreaking havoc in the skies. The vehicles aren’t just unpilotable killstreaks either; these are fully controllable war machines, loaded to the nines with rocket pods, Gatling guns and death-bringing missiles. Homefront employs a system known as Battle Points, an XP system with a twist that lets you purchase equipment and vehicles on each spawn. Points can be earned in a number of ways – killing an enemy, grabbing an assist, taking control of a point, avenging the death of a teammate (or getting revenge for yours), and you can choose when to spend them throughout the round. Smaller rewards, like an armoured anti-infantry drone, cost fewer points, while heavily armed helicopters require you to save up the cash. You’ll spawn directly inside the vehicle too, and buying them with Battle Points is the only way to access them, meaning there’s no sudden rush for the tank at the beginning of the game. There’s a standard XP system too, for fulfilling certain ‘Call of Duty Barracks-alike’ challenges, which unlocks new armour and equipment throughout your multiplayer career, and the usual class-based equipment loadout menus as well.

In turn, the nature of the Battle Points system ends up with games gradually building into a crescendo of all-out war, with matches starting out as relatively light, infantry-based scuffles and coming to a nail-biting conclusion of tank and helicopter fire overrunning the once-quaint farmland environments and destroyed American suburbs.

Though Kaos promise plenty of game types in the full game (including the usual Team Deathmatch), we mainly got stuck into Ground Control, a game type that’ll feel familiar to Battlefield veterans. It plays very much like Rush, and has players battling for control over two points on a map. Once your team has secured them both, a progress bar will fill over a period of a few minutes until your asked to push on to another two points. The biggest difference between this and Bad Company 2, however, is that there is no defending team. Both teams are vying to take control of the points, and if the opposing team manages to grab hold of the second set of points after being pushed back, you’ll be back at square one. It leads to a sense of genuine struggle between both sides as control over the points goes back and forth between them, all the while knowing that at any moment in the game you could be on the back foot should someone have saved up enough points to bring in the big guns against you.

Of course, it’s difficult to describe Homefront’s multiplayer on the whole as innovative. It is what it is, a halfway house between Call of Duty and Battlefield, but what a genuinely brilliant halfway house it is. Given the option between staying to play more Homefront or heading back home for our daily games of Call of Duty, we’d have probably preferred the former.

And this really is just the tip of the Kalashnikov for Homefront. With plenty more going on behind the scenes, including a single-player campaign that looks worthy enough to stand toe-to-toe with the shooter behemoths, and the salivating tease of a multiplayer Beta possibly coming in the months ahead, we’re sure to be seeing considerably more of Kaos’ finest very soon. Could it be one of the finest online shooters coming next year? Almost certainly. Make no mistake, this is one game you’ll want invading your play time.